The Hero of Karol Szymanowski's Opera King Roger In

4 Password ‘Roger’. The Hero of Karol Szymanowski’s Opera King Roger in Tadeusz Miciński’s Theatre of the Soul Edward Boniecki Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences Towards the end of the first act of Szymanowski’s opera King Roger, the hero of the title, ruler of Sicily, calls to judgment the Shepherd, who is the cause of religious confusion through preaching about an unknown God, with the following words: When the stars light up in the dark blue sky, you will come to the gates of my palace. There the guard will challenge you with ‘Shepherd’, and you will answer them: ‘Roger’.1 The challenge is ‘Shepherd’ and the response is ‘Roger’. But when in the second act the Shepherd arrives at Roger’s palace, he responds to the guards’ challenge, ‘Shepherd’, by correcting them: ‘Challenge: Roger!’ Might this be the librettist’s mistake? Should the response really be ‘Shepherd’? It soon turns out that this is in fact the case, because it is King Roger, wearing a pilgrim’s clothes, following the Shepherd who awakens in him a response. That response is the answer, to his own, Roger’s, existence, since the King’s soul, when challenged by the King as to its own identity, responded with ‘Shepherd’. Roger’s name opened the gates of the palace of the King of Sicily to the Shepherd. The challenge ‘Roger’ opens up the world of Szymanowski’s theatrical imagination, created in his opera.2 Central to it is the character of King Roger, who exercises absolute rule over Sicily, and over the composer’s 57 58 Edward Boniecki imagination (it was the composer himself who changed the original title of the libretto by Iwaszkiewicz from The Shepherd to King Roger). This is a king guarding the threatened integrity of the state, and a man threatened by the disintegration of his own personality – thus a complex character, with internal conflicts and an uncertain sense of identity. A character whose identity remains elusive when we try to put a definitive interpretation to Szymanow- ski’s opera. What exactly is the role of the hero of the opera’s title on the theatrical plane: Roger II, King of Sicily, precisely who is he? Roger II, the first King of Sicily and creator of the united Norman king- dom of Sicily and Naples, who ruled from his court in Palermo in the twelfth century, was a historical figure,3 as was his companion Edrisi, the Arabian wise man. This was the great Arabian geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi, who sought Roger’s protection at the court in Palermo from persecution by the Fatimids, and who made for the king a planisphere — a surface plane pro- jection of the map of the Earth, which contained everything known about the geographic shape of the world at that time. However, it would be very risky, or even absurd, to conclude on that basis that King Roger is a historical opera, even though a comment in the libretto that the action takes place in twelfth-century Sicily might encourage such a naïve interpretation, and even though stage directions describe in detail the place of the action — the historical landscape of Sicily from the times of Roger II, with the appropriate instructions on stylisation. If this interpretation were correct, King Roger would resemble a musical postcard from the composer’s trip to Sicily, instead of being what it is — a continually fascinating and dramatically inspiring masterpiece of music theatre.4 Tadeusz Miciński gave his drama W mrokach Złotego Pałacu czyli Bazilissa Teofanu [In the gloom of the Golden Palace, or Bazilissa Teofanu] the subtitle Tragedia z dziejów Bizancjum X wieku [A Tragedy from the History of Tenth- Century Byzantium] (1909) and moreover called it a ‘historical tragedy’.5 His descriptions of the interiors of the churches and palaces of Constantinople are written with what might be described as documentary pedantry, and have their own autonomic value within the drama, which appears independent of its content. But the actual meaning of the drama is located somewhere else, Password ‘Roger’ 59 in the spiritual sphere beyond history.6 That is why Bazilissa Teofanu both is and is not a ‘historical tragedy’, since it does not respect the historical time. One might say that it is an illusory historical drama, in spite of the fact that the characters appearing in it are historical figures (to a much greater extent than in King Roger), and that the events presented in Miciński’s plot can be found on the pages of the history of Byzantium in a form which has not been transformed into literature. When discussing the planned libretto with Iwaszkiewicz, Szymanowski’s letters show that he had a similar theatrical form in mind for his opera. Initially he even wanted to divide it into two parts: a prologue (crowd scenes, dances in the Byzantine-Arabic interiors of the palaces) which would dazzle with stage splendour, and which only then would be followed by the drama ‘proper’ envisaged by Iwaszkiewicz, ‘taking place at the right spiritual heights of significant experiences.’ The two parts were to be linked by the character of the main hero, assisted by the Arabian magus, a predecessor of Edrisi (letter dated 18 August 1918).7 Sending to Iwaszkiewicz the outline of the Sicilian drama, in a letter dated 27 October 1918, the composer said: I think that the anecdotal content — the factual framework of the drama — is of lesser importance than its inner emotional [crossed out: content] substance, and for this reason it seems to me that you can take into account this elucubration of mine either in full or in parts without the risk of being constrained or limited in any way.8 This demonstrates clearly that Szymanowski introduced a double layer into the theatrical form of King Roger on purpose: there is the narrative and the stage plot linked to it as the external layer, and the truly important, spiritual internal layer. The dichotomic character of the theatrical form has a fundamental influence on the rules by which the meaning of Szymanowski’s work is constituted, and on its interpretation. This dichotomy should also be applied consistently in defining the staging framework. Among the sources used by Szymanowski when writing King Roger were the stage directions for Miciński’s Bazilissa Teofanu. Iwaszkiewicz was ama- zed to discover this when reviewing the second volume of Miciński’s Utwory dramatyczne [Dramas], which included that particular work, in an academic edition prepared by Teresa Wróblewska, who was dedicated to the Magus’s 60 Edward Boniecki cause.9 Returning to Miciński’s drama after very many years, Iwaszkiewicz did not remember anything of the work which he had read in his youth; he was, however, struck by the similarity between Bazilissa Teofanu and King Roger: When I started reading Bazylissa Teofanu now, I was struck by something familiar about it. I could not have been remembering it, I had read it so long ago. And yet even the very list of dramatis personae, with the Prioress, the Patriarch and the Norman royal guard appeared to be more than familiar. More like my own flesh and blood. Miciński’s description of the stage set: ‘Mother of God Hyperagia, with her head veiled by dusk, and the enormous figure lost in the depth of vaults, glowing withthelightofthecandelabras,lampsandpolycandles...’. What the heck! I always did wonder, where Karol got those ‘polycandles’ in the description of the set of the first act of King Roger, and here it is. A clear trail, leading far and true. [...] ButKing Roger, as envisaged by Szymanowski, descends in a direct line from Bazylissa Teofanu. (Notabene, scene directions for King Roger where all written by Szymanowski himself).10 The significance of Miciński in the development of the composer’s creative imagination is generally known.11 The ‘polycandles’ borrowed from Miciński had appeared earlier in Efebos, where Szymanowski was already making use of stage directions from Bazilissa Teofanu (Opowieść o cudzie świętego młodzie- niaszka Inoka Porfirego-Ikonografa [The story of the miracle of the holy youth Inok Porfiry-Ikonograf]) when describing Byzantine architecture.12 However, the comment by Iwaszkiewicz, who was, after all, a co-author of the opera’s libretto, demands that the matter be examined more closely. All the more so since Iwaszkiewicz claimed that the trail of the author of W mroku gwiazd [In the gloom of the Stars] ‘leads far and true’. It is worth noting in passing that the production of King Roger in Warsaw’s Grand Theatre in 2000, under the direction of Mariusz Treliński and with stage sets by Boris Kudlička (pre- miered on 10 March 2000), reached deep into Miciński’s poetical idiom, and for the first time placed the plot of Szymanowski’s opera in its subterranean world which had been brought to the surface. Activating the deep-meaning structures of King Roger in the production, with the aid of Jung’s depth psychology, unconsciously revealed genetic link with the world of Miciński’s Password ‘Roger’ 61 imagination and his works.13 This was also probably, to a large extent, the reason for the success of the production, where the music was so naturally visualised on the stage, and where the images kept referring to Micinski’s poetry, which still mystifies and fascinates by the power of its imagination. That poetry is still a test of the imagination for the audience and a challenge in terms of interpretation. The spirit of the King of the Normans, Roger, unconsolable in ‘black tor- ment’ and wandering after death, was portrayed by Miciński in the volume W mroku gwiazd [In the Dusk of the Stars] (1902), in the poem Msza żałobna [Funeral Mass] (in the Polar night cycle).

Load more